Technical Field
This disclosure relates to electronic systems, and more particularly, to balancing power consumption and performance on integrated circuits used in electronic system.
Description of the Related Art
Managing power consumption in electronic systems has taken on a greater importance in recent years. This particularly holds true with the proliferation of portable electronic systems (e.g., tablet computers, smart phones, etc.) which utilize a battery as their primary power source. Thermal control in electronic systems (which is related to power consumption) has also taken on greater importance.
In typical processor-based systems, one or more operating voltages may be increased for larger processing workloads, and decreased for smaller processing workloads as well as for idle periods. Clock frequencies may also be increased or decreased according to processing workloads. Increasing the voltage and/or the clock frequency for a processor may result in greater power consumption and higher temperatures on the integrated circuit(s) used to implement a system. To manage power consumption and thermal output, many electronic systems implement power management control functions that may be hardware and/or software-based. In implementing these control functions, voltage, power and temperature safety margins may be utilized. These margins may set limits on the voltages, the amount of power consumed, and the on-die temperature of integrated circuits within the system. By enforcing these margins using the built-in control functionality, power consumption and thermal output of the system may be maintained within a safe operating envelope.